


here, at the end of the world

by commas_and_ampersands



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (Anime & Manga)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Silver Millennium Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-27
Updated: 2018-11-27
Packaged: 2019-08-30 02:23:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16756066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/commas_and_ampersands/pseuds/commas_and_ampersands
Summary: “I’ve grown skilled at slaughter in the time you have given me.”“No, Venus.  You’ve merely become accustomed.  Believe me; there is a difference.”





	here, at the end of the world

**Author's Note:**

> Written February 2009; revised November 2018.

It felt like there was nothing left to breathe.

Or maybe it just felt like it wasn’t worth it to breathe anymore.

Venus dragged a her sword, forged of jewel and poisoned stone, behind her.  She'd wound her chain, gold and coated in mottled red, around her waist, the links scraping against her hip.  She'd needed to keep one arm free to clutch at the wound in her stomach.  Her uniform was wet with blood.  Her eyes were dry.

The battle had ended hours ago, and the Dark Kingdom had declared victory after a fortnight of terror and injury.  Now demons and cursed men wandered through the ruins of their once great civilization, picking off the survivors.  Venus had been found three times now, and three times she had slain her opponent.  A Terran lieutenant, a winged monster, and a general whose lips and hands and mouth she'd grown to know so well.  Some had said he’d had a heart of stone, but they'd been wrong.

She’d shattered it, same as her own.

Not that a broken heart mattered anymore.

Venus knew she had no hope of surviving, and she had swallowed the hopes of victory long before.  There was no banner to raise, no one to rally around.  The queen was missing.  The princess was dead.  She'd be dead too, sooner every moment now, but she'd take as many down with her as she could.  A small comfort to hold on to here at the end of the world.

“Kunzite’s dead?”

She looked to her left, surprised to hear Jadeite's familiar rasp.  Mars had chased him down hours before, and Venus had seen the resulting inferno over the horizon.  The resulting heat could be felt for miles, smoke and ash cloaking the stars from view.  He should not have survived.

But he had.

Barely.

Every inch of skin on his body had been scalded and blistered.  She'd kissed him once, years before, collecting the affections of pretty men and women like baubles languishing on the shelf.  Now all his beauty had been scorched away, and she felt viciously, savagely glad.  He was monstrous now.  Fitting, after what he'd done to them.

“Is he dead?” Jadeite repeated savagely, voice raw against his vocal cords.

“Yes.”  She could taste his encroaching death on the wind.  For a moment, it was stronger than her own.  “Didn’t you feel it?”

His eyes, bright as ever, sharpened with loss and rage.  “I didn’t believe it.  I suppose you were more his equal than I realized.”

“I’ve grown skilled at slaughter in the time you have given me.”

“No, Venus.  You’ve merely become accustomed.  Believe me; there is a difference.”

“And you would know.”

He glanced down at her wound meaningfully.  “From what I can see, you still never learned to guard your left side.” 

Venus fought not to follow his gaze.  “Your commander left his mark.”

“I expected nothing less.”

“Neither did I,” Venus returned, her lips twitching into a defeated smile.  “Just like I expected nothing less from Mars.”

An odd look crossed Jadeite’s face.  The injuries he had sustained made it hard to categorize.  Was that regret lurking in the shadows of his ruined flesh?  Grief?

She wished she were strong enough to take his head from his shoulders.  How dare he?  How dare any of them be sorry _now?_

“Do me the service of not forcing her in my thoughts at the last.  I’ll give you the same courtesy with Kunzite.”

Venus opened her mouth, intending to say that she had no hope of turning thoughts of him aside.  He had raised armies against her, led the assault against her home planet, killed her father with his bare hands, thrown her mother to be ripped apart by the horde.  Yet she could not bear to let go of the moments when his fingers had played with her hair, when he whispered to her from dark corners, his soft smiles and quiet laughter.  She couldn’t reconcile one man with the other.  Her lover had looked at her with green eyes; her enemy with grey.  She didn't know what that meant.  She didn't know that it mattered.

But she would not say this to Jadeite.  Gossip could be traded with Zoisite, jokes with Nephrite, and secrets with Kunzite.  Where Jadeite was concerned, she had only deployed diplomacy.  She'd never be trusted with anything that mattered, even before the war.

He was defeated, but victor all the same, and she would not bare her throat.

“He wouldn’t tell me,” she said instead.

“Tell you what?”

Her fingers tightened against the pommel of her blade.  She raised her eyes, wrapped her shattered heart with steel, and breathed in the scent of ash and carrion.

_“Why?”_

Jadeite just laughed, doubling over in pain.  “I have no answers for you.  You’re mistaking me for a dead man.”

More mysteries her body would not give her the time to unravel.  “Does that make it easier?  Acting like you’re dead.”

She swore for just a moment his face faltered.

“Nothing makes this easier.”

“Well, I'm pleased you found genocide and betrayal—”

“Betrayal?”

“—such a trial.”

He snarled.  “I betrayed nothing and no one.”

“Tell it to your prince's corpse!”

“He's the one who betrayed us!” he howled, blood flecking the corners of his mouth.  “He didn’t choose me, or any of us, did he?  He chose your witch princess.”

“We don't choose who we love.”  How much easier would their lives have been if they could?  Serenity and Endymion could have kept to their own shores.  She and Kunzite would not have flirted at the knife's edge of duty and affection.  Jadeite could have turned his back to Mars instead of trailing her, soaking up the scorn she dangled at his feet so carelessly.  Jadeite would not have burned, she would not have bled, and the stars would have shined.

“He should have tried.”

Bitter, broken monstrous boy.

“I’m sure he’s very sorry now.”

Sole survivor of a crumbled empire.

They said nothing for a few minutes, silent save for the distant screams and death throes of the Silver Millennium, brought to its knees. 

“We didn't win,” Jadeite murmured.  “Did we?”

“No.  Nobody won.”

Jadeite began to sag, breath rattling in his chest like a broken door.

“I’m tired,” he said.  It was the most honest he’d ever been with her.

She leaned heavily against her sword.  It might have been the only thing still holding her up.  “So am I.”

He stumbled forward and fell to his knees in front of her.  She wondered if he'd meant to embrace her or throttle her.  “We’re the only ones left.”

“For a little while.”

“Not long now,” he agreed.  Then, apropos of nothing.  “He loved you, you know.”

“He did.”  Grief stung at her eyes like wasps.  “She never loved you.”

“I know.”

That didn't seem to hurt him as much as she'd wanted to.

She could hurt him in other ways.

“Should we get on with it then?”

He nodded.  “Help me up?”

He hadn't earned the courtesy of dying on his feet.

She reached out anyway.

He lurched upright.  A layer of his flesh came off in her hands.

She straightened, adjusting the grip of her sword in her free hand.

“Ready?”

He gathered energy, glowing white hot and pulsing between his ruined palms.

“Yes.”


End file.
